Dear Bill Gates,

by chumchingee

I really don’t expect a genius of your caliber to listen to me. You have always been one of my heroes. One to look up to. You started with next to nothing and put together a business empire worth a fabulous amount of money and power . . . I think you have married well. That is also a huge accomplishment considering your wealth.

I see you are out there with a mission to feed the world. I find that very good. Your 26 billion dollars worth of projects is staggering to say the least. Your wealth makes you a form of royalty. There is immense responsibility. There is a lot of danger to being one of the world’s wealthiest people. Both to yourself and your family, it is a stage just like the Queen of England or the President of the United States. I would vote for you if you ever got into politics. You are an incredible man and businesman. I wanted to express my extreme respect for you before I started.

I am an ordinary, average man. I have been divorced, had 3 children (all boys and proud of them), remarried 15 years later. My wife Vera and I have been married 15 and 1/2 good years together. I am type II diabetic. I was born in England during WWII. My father was a composing room printer. I followed in his footsteps. I am now retired.

If I have an extraordinary talent, it is the ability to see ideas in 3-d instead of 2-d. I see multiple angles to concepts and ideas. I have an average ordinary memory. I am not in your genius category. Sometimes I see things that gives me an edge over other people. That is the 3-d coming forward. I have no great abilities. I can type rather fast from having worked as a teletype operator at one point. But even that is nothing extra great. To the point though . . .

I hear you are working with Monsanto Corporation to feed the world. Using Genetically Modified foods, it is hoped to increase production so that the entire world will not go hungry. That is very good. I have a small problem with it though.

It is that 3-d angle vision I have. You see if I am right, the food acts as a sterilization process long term. That means that anyone consuming it in any large amount is likely to end up sterile in their prime of life. It means a drastic one generation dive of our population. There will be no second or third generation of people eating these products.

I hope I am wrong. I have just barely glimpsed this angle. I have no absolute proof that I am right. I have to leave that to scientists with a lot more knowledge than I have.

It came from the fact that Monsanto protects its seeds by making them sterile after one generation. Good business practice! But if I am right, nature has its little revenge planned. The revenge is it passes the sterile process on to whatever animal eats it.

Also I dislike the idea that Monsanto is entrenched in the very agency meant to regulate food. That is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. If I am correct in my vision of things to come(not ESP or anything like it), then a drastic reduction in population will occur. That is good in one way, and terrible in another. People are a resource like any other. We need to preserve as much of that resource as possible for the future of our species.

I think the only answer to feeding the world is to increase our ability to produce natural food. 6/7ths of this planet is covered with salt water. We have entire continents like Africa covered by the Sahara. Putting that Sahara back into food production would go a long way towards feeding the planet. My suggestion would be to produce a shallow lake along one side of the Sahara(probably the western edge). As the winds blow West to East, this would produce a lot more rain than we normally see on the continent. This in turn would make the place bloom. I am not an engineer, I am a simple printer. My 3-d vision tells me this:

Use Atlantic Ocean water distilled in solar furnaces to produce the lake. I have a vague knowledge of how to do it. The water would have to be used to generate electricity in steam engines designed to use ocean water. That is a problem as it produces a lot of chemicals besides water. Which means filters would have to be used to keep the machinery running. The distilled water would have to be dumped into a basin especially designed to hold the water instead of having it leached into the soil. The idea being a grassland the entire length and width of the Sahara. After a few years, the grassland can be gradually changed to produce crops.I strongly suggest we plant a lot of trees that produce fruit as well. The idea is to keep the heat away from the ground with shade trees. Apple trees and Orange trees come to mind.

I suggest we start with hydroponic crops and progress from there to normal crops in the fields. I suggest crops designed to work with grassland instead of exposing the delicate balance needed to reverse the deserts.

Another problem is the people in the area. We have some very vicious people in Africa. We also have some very poor people. The one group tends to predator on the other. The political situation is not good in Africa. I see it as a vacuum waiting to be filled with people from the outside coming in to conquer those already there. I suggest that this might occur if China ever sets their sights on the continent. China has unlimited population resources to work with. Nature abhors a vacuum. This might just happen.

The concern I have with GM foods is real. This other stuff is speculation.

I suggest that we closely watch what happens to people that eat these GM foods. Keep track of the number of children born to these people. Then if I am wrong, we have worried for nothing. I think Attention Deficit Disorder is possibly related to these foods as well. But that is speculation.

Hopefully, I am totally wrong.

If you happen to see this, my best regards. If not, well I have vented my frustration.